though. Have you memorized any of the world plans?'
'I've never been out of Rule,' Rien said. Even that was overstating the case. She'd never been out of the Commodore's household, not even as far as the algae tanks.
'Well, no matter.' Perceval craned her head back. She still held the key box in her hand, clenched like any other useless talisman. Were even Engineers superstitious? And then convulsively, she turned and slammed it against the wall. It shattered, and she let the pieces fall. And then turned away, head jerking as if startled.
Rien opened her mouth, still tasting blood and that machine-oil funk. But a frown of concentration drew down the corners of Perceval's mouth, and she held up one impatient uplifted hand. Whatever Rien had been about to say, she hushed herself.
And so heard the pad of running feet.
Perceval heard them, too. But she could not afford the time or the break in concentration to look. They were unarmed, alone, barely dressed.
The pull of skin across her cheeks told her she was pursing her lips as she concentrated, a habit her mother always teased about. It helped distract her from the weightlessness of her shadowy new wings, which generated a deep and repellent terror.
No one had a schematic of all the world. Not since the moving times, as far as Perceval knew. Not since the engines and the world brain failed, leaving them with partial maps and hard copy. But she knew her history, the stories of the world ships sent out like groping fingers across the Enemy's empty sea, better charted but no less gallant than any unevolved raftsman braving the Pacific. It was a kind of superb blindness, the human push for exploration, for growth.
Or maybe it wasn't. After all, any virus could do the same. Her symbiont, engineered and unintelligent, was even now colonizing the unknown shores of Rien's body.
Still, Perceval was human. She could be forgiven an ethnocentric value judgment. And she was a human with a carefully bred and force-evolved body and a highly engineered prosthesiotomy. She had seen maps. Thus, she could recollect them. And—it was just possible—figure out where they were, at least in the broadest of terms.
Images flickered, turned, shuffled across her inner eye. Sharp and precise, machine-learned: unlike her father, she was not a bred eidetic. But she had a trick he didn't, and she layered and turned and compared. She had her natural spatial sense, heightened for a flyer, and she had the sound of the echoes along the corridor, closer, rounding the corner now. It all built an image, a geography.
She knew where they were.
And then, when she would have expected a hail or a challenge, came the flat hiss of air guns.
Perceval's reflexes were accelerated to the edge of diminishing returns. In a stress situation, thinking chips made her limbs' decisions for her; it could take too long for electricity to flow along nerves. She could assess and act faster than any unengineered creature could dream of, if it could not be precisely described as thinking.
She had no time to react.
Her parasite wings flared wide; they spun her. The sensation was as a child swung around in a strong man's grip, and Perceval was as powerless to hold her ground as that child. One wing cupped Rien, drew her close, and with that Perceval could assist. She caught her sister in her arms and clutched her inside the curve of her body, her nose buried in Rien's greasy dark hair. Rien screamed, or started to scream, and they were slung around again. Perceval felt the vibration of Rien's cry through her rib cage, and could think only how it must hurt to shout like that, with vacuum-stressed lungs.
Perceval wanted to close her eyes. But were she willing to admit cowardice, she barely had the time.
There were four in the corridor: a crossfire, two at each end. They wore coveralls, black with bright patterns in ultraviolet, which made Perceval think they were Exalt.
Without asking questions, without a word, they fired, and continued to fire. And air darts sailed all around Perceval and Rien, slivers of drugged or deadly plastic that were no threat to the world's fragile hull. No one would risk an explosive weapon inside. Mean or Exalt, everyone feared the Enemy more than anything save fire.
The darts made little sound when they struck the parasite wings—no melodramatic clang or thud. Just a patter like the drip of condensation from a conduit. They did not pass through. And wherever the darts flew toward Perceval or Rien, there in advance were the wings.
And then they were moving, again, not flying—the corridor was too narrow and too low—but the jerk at Perceval's shoulders was like flying. The wings—she
There were four wings, then, six, nine. The darts sounded like a hard rain. All Perceval could do was cling to Rien, whose forearms were locked over her own, legs trailing, and press her mouth into Rien's hair.
They came among the defenders. One dived aside; Perceval's retina photographed her, arms reaching, weapon thrown aside.
The other one, the wings went through.
If Perceval had a hand free, she would have covered Rien's eyes. They might be of an age, but she could not help but think of her sister as a child, in need of protection. Rien's fingers dug into Perceval's wrist, and there was blood, blue and bright, darkening in atmosphere, the sharp stink of it. Rien sobbed.
The defender was meat, and they were through.
The patter of darts against the parasite wings stopped abruptly when they turned the corner. They passed through lock doors, into abandoned portions of the world where the air was stale and chill radiated from the bulkheads, and it was no longer any effort for her wings to hold her feet from the floor. No gravity and no light: she saw in infrared, and by the faint chill radiance of the greeny-blue fungus that grew in the welded seams of the walls.
No pursuit followed; they were away. Perceval felt the last blood sliding as if frictionless from the wings that weren't hers. It flicked free, shivering globes that struck the corridor walls and stuck, food for that fungus. The wings folded together again, encapsulating Perceval and Rien in a warmer chrysalis.
'Who was that?' Rien said, finally, her voice thready but admirably calm.
Perceval wondered if it was a pretense.
'I don't know anything about them,' she admitted.
'Oh.' After a silence, though Rien cleared her throat and continued. 'I do.'
'What?'
Rien was shaking, and her fingers bruised Perceval's flesh against her bones, but Perceval wasn't going to say anything. She waited until Rien organized herself enough to say, 'They're on a war footing, don't you think? Expecting invasion.'
'Yes,' Perceval said. 'I think so. I think it's not just Rule and Engine that are fighting. And I know something else.'
'You know where we are?'
Perceval nodded. Rien would feel her face move against her hair. 'We're a really long way from home.'
One of Dust's relics of remembrance was the fond old ideal of gallantry. In watching Perceval and Rien, he recollected it.
He was too much a gentleman to insinuate himself into the awareness of Perceval's wings when they wrapped her and her sister so tightly. They seemed to be functioning as intended.
It was enough.
He held the maidens in his attention for a moment, then released them. Left them huddled in his gift, and turned away.
He could not be distracted by his darling girls when he must be about seducing villains. Something might show, some hint, or texture. Some glimpse, and it would never do for Perceval and Rien to be unsafe, even for a moment.
Dust's guest would be with him shortly. And beyond the girls' safety, Dust couldn't afford to let his rival guess from whence the blow would fall.
Chimes announced a visitor. Not Dust's bells, however. Samael, damn him, selected his own clarion. He chose to be piped aboard like an admiral. Was it any wonder Dust found him unbearable?
